City Hall wants to change how Durham handles annexations and utility extensions to prevent a repeat of last summer’s legislative maneuvering over a controversial subdivision.

The proposal comes up for a City Council decision Monday night.

Assistant Planning Director Patrick Young said the “Recommended Coordination Strategy” would establish “s a clear and unambiguous policy” that combines procedures formerly split between the planning and budget offices.

It also eliminates the “Urban Growth Area” that proponents of the 751 South subdivision used in an unsuccessful legislative attempt to reverse the City Council rejection of annexation and water-sewer extension.

After a subsequent closed meeting, the City Council directed City Manager Tom Bonfield to make a “comprehensive” review of policies concerning property outside the city limits.

Bonfield, though, said the recommended changes are not just a reaction to the General Assembly.

“There would be a tendency to say what we are doing is because of a particular development that has been controversial, which may be impacted by that,” he said. “But in my opinion there is a lot more logic and strategy in terms of good planning.”

For one thing, the strategy would discourage “satellite” annexation: incorporating areas, such as Treyburn, that are not connected to the rest of the city. In the past, Durham has created satellites with the expectation of eventually annexing the land in between “such that Durham would have “cohesive city limits,” Bonfield said.

Legislation passed in the last session “takes that out of the equation,” he said, requiring referendum approval before annexation may take place.

The Urban Growth Area defines areas where city planners expect growth and demand for city services. A few North Carolina cities still use them, by different names, but Young said they are a 1960s planning tool that has been made obsolete by newer methods for estimating future utility needs.

In early 2011, the City Council expanded the Urban Growth Area to include 751 South’s 167-acre tract on N.C. 751 near the Chatham County line. In early 2012, though, the council unanimously voted against annexing the property and considering water-sewer extension.

Afterward, a bill in the General Assembly was amended to require cities to extend utilities, upon landowners’ request, within their growth areas. The bill failed by a single vote in the state Senate.

Some of the new proposal’s other main provisions:

• Durham would make no water-sewer extensions outside the city limits with annexation, except in a few cases such as a county resident lacking a safe supply of water.

• Utility and annexation applications, and zoning for property coming into the city, would be consolidated in the planning department instead of being split between planning and budget as they are now.

• “Subject matter experts” in the budget, water, public works and other departments would still analyze applications, but their findings would be presented to the council as “a cohesive coordinated document” that gives a clear idea of an annexation’s effects.

• The city would no longer automatically accept the county’s zoning on an annexed property. Applicants for annexation could request particular zoning if they submit development plans at the same time; without a plan, zoning would allow the least intensive development possible in the land’s particular area, or “development tier.”

“This is such a smart solution to a bunch of different problems,” Councilman Steve Schewel said. “It’s kind of an elegant solution to a lot of things we’ve been dealing with.”